


On Duty

by hatstand



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Angst, Fluff and Angst, Gen, One Shot, my general leia has a lot of carrie fisher in her
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-22
Updated: 2016-01-22
Packaged: 2018-05-15 10:24:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5782630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hatstand/pseuds/hatstand
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A General, a Doctor, and a bottle of Aldebaran gin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	On Duty

**Author's Note:**

> I realised I had a burning need to give Leia a FRIEND to talk to. Also: awesome older ladies on my screen, fuck yeah.

‘Will he recover?’

The stormtrooper - Finn, she knows that much, not much more - is laid out on a bed in a sterile medbay behind the glass, face down, surrounded by bustling droids and D’Qar’s meagre supply of monitoring equipment. The best they have to offer.

‘I think so,’ says Dr Kalonia, frowning over her readout; tapping through the feed of his vitals. ‘It’s a deep wound but no spinal damage. He was lucky, unlikely as that sounds. Lightsabers are brutal but they cauterise as they injure, heal as they hurt. I always wondered about that.’

Leia steps forward, pressing her hand against the glass. Not wondering. She knows what put him here.

Kalonia hesitates, glancing up as if to check if she’s crossing a line even friends shouldn’t. ‘The Jedi? As if they knew they needed to be armed, but couldn’t quite bear it.’

‘Don’t kid yourself,’ says Leia dryly. ‘I mean - fine, maybe someone, at some point, thought it was a good idea to take a sword and make it be able to burn you. But let’s not pretend it was ever a good idea. They kept it because it looked _cool_. They kept it because they liked the _noise_ it makes. And then everyone thought whoa, Jedi, lightsabers, that’s what those guys have - and however many thousand accidental severed limbs later, nobody’s learned a damn thing.’

Kalonia barely conceals a smile. ‘I won’t repeat that to your brother when he gets here.’

‘You won’t need to. Luke and I have had this particular conversation a couple of hundred times already. You can see how well it goes down.’

She gestures vaguely to the still form in the medbay, and though she’s smiling the bitterness is audible.

Kalonia grimaces. ‘General? As your chief medic, I’d like to prescribe you something. Just to take the edge off. Hmm?’

Leia’s eyes narrow.

‘It’s a specific drug in quite limited supply; I keep it in my office under lock and key, so you’ll have to follow me?’

Kalonia walks backwards, jangling a small fob meaningfully from one hand.

‘Well, if my chief medic insists on it...’ says Leia, following.

‘I do, I really do,’ says Kalonia, opening her office, tapping the fob on a drawer to slide it open, and lifting out a bottle. Aldebaran gin. Two glasses.

They both need to take the edge off.

 

*

 

‘You did not!’

But it turns out that Major Kalonia did, in fact, once kiss a Rodian.

‘How have I never heard this story?!’

‘We’re old! We have a lot of stories!’

Leia grins, swigs her drink. ‘Damn right.’ Then her face shifts again. ‘But seriously. A Rodian?’

‘She was a very sexy Rodian! And I was young, I was experimenting. And also very drunk.’

Leia cackles, and pours them both another. ‘A toast: to our past drunken experimental selves.’

Kalonia clinks their glasses together. ‘Now that is a statement I need to know more about. Though don’t let me go past this one, hmm? I am on duty.’

Leia raises her eyebrows sardonically. ‘I’ve been on duty since...’ She visibly thinks. ‘Actually I’m not sure I remember not being on duty, if you count princessing, which you should because it’s hard. They make you wear all these hairdos, and go to all these incredibly, unspeakably tedious banquets where you can’t even eat anything because they put you in some impossible clothes that people with internal organs can’t fit into - and then you’re supposed to engage in political debate!’ She drinks again. ‘Though, all things considered, I’d take it over sending people to their deaths every day, so there’s a thing.’

Kalonia meets her eyes with a frown; concern, fondness. She sets down her glass. ‘Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.’

‘Shut up and have another drink,’ says Leia, topping up her glass; spilling a little.

‘I’m on duty,’ Kalonia reminds.

‘The boy is fine,’ Leia says quietly, and for the first time ever in their friendship Kalonia feels the presence of her Force sensitivity: just the gentlest push against her, like a cool breath on her face - but with it a sense of something larger, swirling around them, connecting the two of them in this room, connecting Leia to the wounded boy in the medlab, in a way far more knowing than a few readouts of heart rates, pressures, dosages.

Leia meets her eyes as she does it, not like a challenge; more an admission of guilt. She’s powerful. Kalonia knew she was powerful but not like this. There was command in that breath on her face. She doesn’t doubt that there could be stronger command. Compulsion. Control. Kalonia knows her Jedi history. So Kalonia knows why there isn’t; why that is what she’s chosen; why that is an increasingly hard choice to stand by.

And why, today of all days, it’s still the right one.

Kalonia lets her eyes slide beyond the General, to the view of the medical centre beyond.

‘Looks like we’re both off the hook,’ she says lightly, nodding over Leia’s shoulder at the figure pressed against the glass of Finn’s medbay, still wearing his flightsuit. ‘He’s got a guardian angel now.’

Poe.

‘You have a thing for him,’ says Leia, apparently delighted with this discovery - as Kalonia shifts in her seat, frowning as she watches him berate the droids, anxiously sending them to fetch more pillows, more blankets, more anything for the still figure on the bed.

‘Professional concern,’ says Kalonia curtly. ‘He should be in a medbay himself.’

He should. And she is definitely interested in him in a wholly unprofessional capacity, but then so is half the Resistance. She catches Leia’s eye, and allows herself a small, only slightly filthy smile.

Leia snorts, letting her chair spin to admire the Dameron ass too. ‘Pretty flyboys with slack mouths. So hard to resist. But trust me when I say it’s not going to end well.’ She taps one fingertip against her glass. ‘Worth it, all the same.’

‘To the lost,’ says Kalonia, sadly, lifting her drink.

Leia raises her glass, still looking out at the pilot, now sinking into a chair that a medidroid somehow - somehow - has been persuaded to bring him; at his head as he slips into sleep, much-needed and dreamless sleep.

‘To the lost,’ she says.


End file.
